


A Very Good Liar

by captainpeggy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caduceus is a Good Bro, Character Study, F/F, First Kiss, I'm Stealing That Tag From The MCU Fandom And It's Mine Now, Lesbian Character, Questioning, Self-Reflection, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 16:55:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpeggy/pseuds/captainpeggy
Summary: Beau, with crimson streaking down her face, with her hair dripping with sweat, with her teeth flashing white in some kind of sadistic smile as she fought for her life and had the time of it all in one; Beau, crouched on a rooftop, looking out across a city with sharp eyes and sharper wit; Beau, stretching stiff limbs and rubbing out sore muscles as she undressed for bed, laughing a rare laugh at one of Jester’s jokes or another. Beau, with her smeared eyeliner and undercut growing in just a little, soft brown fuzz on golden skin, and Jester let herself put words to it, finally, cautiously.Because Beau was beautiful.Objectively.Or...Or maybe not so objectively.It's not that Jester thinks there's anythingwrongwith liking girls. She grew up knowing that some girls like boys, and some girls like girls (and some girls like both or neither), but she, specifically, just doesn't. Personally.(Technically.)(Probably?)





	A Very Good Liar

**Author's Note:**

> End notes contain a more detailed trigger warning for mild dubcon that happens in a dream.

Jester wasn’t a liar, technically.

You had to _say_ something untrue to be a liar, and you had to mean it, and _yes, maybe,_ she’d told lies before when the Traveler asked her to or when she thought it would be funny or the truth was too embarrassing, but _this_ she’d never lied about, technically, because nobody had ever asked her about it and so she hadn’t had to say anything at all. So she couldn’t be a liar. Technically.

And _maybe_ if Caduceus or somebody had sat her down and _asked_ her, then _maybe_ she’d lie but she hadn’t done it yet because she hadn’t had to, and because she hadn’t had to say anything about it she hadn’t had to think about it either (and it isn’t lying if you do it to yourself anyways) and so things just went on and she looked at Fjord and thought about what it would be like to kiss him _properly_ this time when they weren’t _dying --_

And it was nice, when she thought about it. It was nice. He was pretty, with his little tiny teeth and his two-tone skin and even his scars, and _clearly_ he had to know what he was doing in bed, because Avantika had seemed to sink her claws into him the way lots of men wanted to do to her mama (and _that_ she didn’t like to think about, even though she knew her mama knew what she was doing, even though she knew nobody could lay a finger on the Ruby against her will without being crushed into itty-bitty pieces, it still didn’t feel very good to think about people thinking about her mama like that). So Jester thought about kissing him and she thought _quite_ a lot about what might happen after that, and she made eyes at him from across every room, and whenever her thoughts _slipped_ into something else she knocked them back on course as quick as she could. Because she _liked_ Fjord. He was kind, he was strong, and like she’d said, he was pretty too. Handsome was the word you were supposed to use for boys, but it wasn’t really right for Fjord and lots of those rules about words were silly anyways.

He’d saved her life. He’d saved all their lives, more than once. He had _honour,_ that was the word her mama would have used, and he held doors and kept promises and when he lied he did it for everyone’s good. And he didn’t lie to _her_ , not anymore, at least, not as far as she knew. And that was nice.

And it was the _niceness_ that made things confusing.

Jester had spent a lot of time in her own head when she was little: she had an _active imagination,_ that’s what her mama had always said, and the Traveler too, that she could make whole worlds out of just her thoughts and play in them all day. And she’d decided once, when she was eleven, maybe, or twelve, that she just wasn’t going to grow out of her _active imagination,_ so she still had that. It was different, sometimes, now than it was when she was _little,_ because now sometimes there was sex in her worlds (with Fjord... mostly) and fantasies about futures and lives that were built on _real_ feelings, not just stories about boys and girls holding hands all dressed up in a ceremony before they went and spent all the rest of their days as a family. She was a grown-up now, mostly, and she had a grown-up imagination, and that was fine because that was how people went: they changed but they didn’t all at the same time.

But Fjord...

She ran through a lot of scenarios in her head. Jester knew a lot about sex, see, because her mama hadn’t kept secrets from her about that kind of thing, and she’d been clear that it was something for _adults only,_ but when Jester got older and got more curious her mama had answered all her questions (so long as they weren’t about _specific_ clients or anything like that but Jester hadn’t really wanted the details of her mama’s sex life _specifically_ so that was fine with her). There was that stuff, and then stuff she just picked up from books and pictures and things she overheard in the halls and through the windows. It had been funny, almost, when she left home and found out how many people hated to talk about sex. They liked to dance around it with pretty words and raised eyebrows and never even say the word, which was funny because it had a word for a reason and what was the point of the word _sex_ if nobody ever said it?

So Jester didn’t feel bad about thinking about Fjord _that way,_ and by _that way_ she meant laid out with his head arched back while she rode him, or fucking her up against a wall, maybe, gently, maybe, or _not_ gently, because she didn’t know what he liked, really, and she didn’t have a preference, really, so she would be happy with whatever made _him_ happy. Really. Because that was something her mama had told her, was that it was a give-and-take sort of thing, and you had to talk about what both of you wanted so you could figure out how both of you could get it.

And Jester wanted Fjord, and that was the most important part of it, for her. Personally.

And that was true, technically.

But there were other things that were also true, maybe, and one of those things was that Fjord was _exactly_ her type and a very beautiful man and a good person and powerful too, but _maybe_ thinking about him like that didn’t _always_ do it for her. And _maybe,_ once in a while, when they’d found a place with a roof over their heads and a real floor under their feet for the night, and Beau was still downstairs drinking long after midnight and Jester had the room to herself... maybe it wasn’t _exactly_ Fjord she thought about _every_ time she got herself off. 

And that was all right, you know, because lots of people thought about their friends like that now and then. And even though Beau was a girl, and Jester didn’t like girls-- because she liked Fjord, and Fjord wasn’t a girl, and she knew people _could_ like both, but _she_ didn’t and that was just true-- that was okay too, because it was just thoughts and _everybody_ had thoughts, about lots of things, and they didn’t have to mean anything. 

They didn’t have to mean anything. 

It had been a long few days on the road: not _interesting_ long, but just walking and walking and walking, and they took turns in the cart, but when you were crossing a whole country, horses weren’t really faster, and especially with Caduceus’s whole _thing_ about letting the horses have a break too, it was _boring,_ really. And Jester wasn’t _wishing_ for a fight exactly but it was hard being stuck with nothing to do but _walk,_ and it made things bounce around inside her head and eventually everyone got bored of talking to her and, well, Jester had lots of practice not having people to talk to, so it wasn’t _so_ bad but still-- 

They set up camp that night in a clearing just a little ways into the tall grasses by the side of the road: Nott pointed out that the flattened-down plants meant someone else had probably camped there before them, and that this place might not be safe, but Beau had cuffed her over the head and told her not to worry so much, because they weren’t being chased anyways and Nott _really_ needed to get used to the idea that the whole world was not _actively_ trying to kill her, and Caleb just sighed and got out his silver wire and set up his little hut, and Nott volunteered Beau for first watch as revenge. 

“We don’t really need someone to keep watch, Nott,” said Caleb quietly. “Nobody can get us when we are in the dome.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” said Beau. “Whatever. We can just do something informal, y’know, switch off when we feel like it. I’m down for chilling outside anyways. It gets stuffy in here.”

“No, it does not,” Caleb replied. “Part of the spell is that air in here is always clean and the right temperature.”

Beau raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh, and magic has _never_ gone wrong before.” She stepped through the wall of the dome and pushed through the grass a little ways so she had a clear view of the road. Through the translucent wall, Jester watched her settle down on the ground, legs criss-crossed in an elaborate pattern.

“Suit yourself,” muttered Caleb, much too late for Beau to have heard.

The ground was lumpy, but not too hard, and Jester liked it when they were all nice and cozy in the dome anyways, much better than she liked it when they were in a town and rented rooms and had to be all _separate--_ not that Jester didn’t _like_ rooming with Beau, just that it was _also_ nice to be surrounded by _everyone,_ and sometimes when Caduceus was sleeping he would roll over and just snuggle up to whoever was the closest to him and Caduceus was _very_ nice to cuddle, and even though Beau was _very_ cool (and clever and strong and pretty, objectively), she didn’t really seem interested in cuddles with Jester. 

Which was fine. Obviously. 

Caleb stayed up. He stayed up most nights, at least for an hour or two after the others had gone to bed, flipping through his books and scrawling notes in the margins. Every once in a while, Jester would hear him mutter something to himself in Zemnian and see the tiniest flash of light or warp in the air above his hand, and he’d look satisfied and make some more notes, or frown and go back and read and reread the ones he’d already jotted down. It looked very tedious. Jester watched him through half-closed eyes for a little while before getting bored and rolling over onto her other side to try and get to sleep.

“Sorry, Jester,” murmured Caleb. “I’ll try and be quieter.”

“It’s fine,” said Jester, voice muffled by her pillow. “It’s interesting, really.”

“I think you are lying to me.” There was a note of humor in his whisper now, and Jester smiled, just a little, because it _was_ funny, and even more so because nobody else was awake to hear it.

“Good night, Caleb.”

_ Good night, Jester,  _ she heard in her head, and smiled a little bit more.

It was easy falling asleep surrounded by the even breathing of her friends.

_ She was back on the Squall-Eater, in a familiar room, larger and more luxuriously decorated than their own cramped quarters had been. Jester’s eyes turned instinctively to the door, where a black iron carving topped the frame: the curling dark body of a serpent, studded with burning golden eyes. It was hard to look away from-- it felt like she was supposed to be looking at it, like it was something important, and she focused on one eye, watching the colours shift in the flickering candlelight. Her gaze jumped to a second eye, a third-- there were so many, really, and it was kind of scary to think about that, about all the things they could see, all the watching you could do with eyes like that, and--  _

_ One of them blinked. _

_ Jester stepped back instinctively, and the backs of her legs hit something hard: she stumbled and fell, and she tried to catch herself before tumbling over, but her muscles weren’t listening, and she collapsed backwards onto-- the bed? It had been on the other side of the room just a moment ago, but this was a dream (which she realized with a bit of a start) so of course that didn’t matter (and then she forgot it was a dream, and was confused again), and the whole room was going strange, darkening at the edges, and suddenly Jester couldn’t see the door or the carving above it, just the dozens and dozens of amber eyes glowing in a field of black. _

_ Two more eyes opened in the darkness, different than the ones from the carving-- they burned with the same cruel light, but where the carving’s eyes were round, split down the middle by a slice of a pupil, these were narrower, more human in shape and size. _

_ Human? _

_ No. Not quite. _

_ Jester had seen these eyes before. _

_ “Bonjour, mon cher,” purred a familiar voice, and a single finger traced a line down the center of Jester’s chest, nail digging in just enough to hurt. “Or is it chérie, tonight? No matter. I’m adaptable.” _

_ Jester opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. _

_ A wicked laugh from the darkness. “What’s the matter, chérie? Cat got your tongue? Lucky for you, it hasn’t got mine...” _

Jester’s eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright, Caduceus’s arm falling off from where it had wound up over her shoulders and dropping to the ground. Caduceus let out a vaguely offended mumble and blinked sleepy eyes open. “What’s wrong?”

The sound of his voice, deep and rumbly, slowed Jester’s pounding heart a little. “It’s nothing,” she said softly, glancing around the dome to make sure she hadn’t woken anyone else. Caleb had finally gone to sleep, with Frumpkin nestled up by his belly-- she must have been asleep an hour or two at least. “Just a dream.”

“Nightmare?” asked Caduceus, pushing himself up on one arm and pausing for a yawn before continuing. “I think I can do a quick Calm Emotions...”

Jester frowned. “I.. I don’t know.”

“Mm,” murmured Caduceus. “Don’t know about the spell, or don’t know if it was a nightmare?”

“Either. Both,” Jester said, rubbing her eyes. “I think... I think I just need to take a walk.”

Caduceus blinked slowly. “Okay. Be safe out there.”

Jester scanned the dome again. “Where’s Beau?”

“Still out there, I think,” said Caduceus with another yawn. “Careful you don’t startle her.”

“I could take her,” Jester defended.

“Mm,” said Caduceus, flopping back onto his pillow and beginning to snore again almost immediately.

Jester stared at him for a moment, not sure whether to be concerned or impressed by the ease with which Caduceus fall back asleep. She figured sleep was a little like death, and Caduceus seemed to like life around that line, so maybe it made sense, maybe. Or maybe he was just sleepy. Maybe it didn’t matter.

She crawled out of her bedroll, slid her boots on, and stepped lightly over Nott to make her way out of the dome.

Beau wasn’t far, just a few steps away, cross-legged where the dirt road began to become overgrowth. Jester stepped on a twig and winced as it snapped. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Beau, and even facing away, Jester could hear the half-smile in her voice. “A little company’ll be nice.”

“Are you meditating, or whatever?” Jester settled down on a flat rock beside Beau, sticking her legs out in front of her and leaning back on her hands. 

Beau glanced over at her. “Or whatever. You know me. Not big on that inner-peace shit.”

“It’s just _me,_ Beau, you don’t have to pretend.”

Beau sighed. “I tried. Made it a few minutes, got distracted, tried again. Dairon would be disappointed.”

Jester grinned. “ _I_ won’t tell them if _you_ won’t.”

“They’ll know,” said Beau. “I can’t lie to them. Not, like, _won’t,_ but can’t.”

“You’re a very good liar,” Jester argued. “Maybe they wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, they would,” Beau said. “You know that trick I do, the pressure points, the whole truth-punching stuff? Dairon taught me that. Doubt they’d appreciate me trying to pull a fast one on them when they taught me everything I know.”

“Maybe you’ll just make up your own monk thing,” said Jester cheerfully. “Maybe you don’t need to learn to meditate. Maybe you’ll just come up with some new way to find inner peace or whatever and you’ll get even _cooler_ than Dairon.”

Beau smiled a little, but said nothing.

Jester looked out over the road, to where the grasses began again on the far side, then tipped her head back up and looked at the stars. Some of them made patterns: her mama had shown her a map once, of all the stars in the sky, and how they made fish and bears and unicorns and dragons and women and men and all kinds of creatures in-between, and Jester had snuck up onto the roof that night and stared up into the dark sky for hours and hours, making up her own asterisms. The five clustered to the south-- those made the swirl of a lollipop. The line of several stars that ran from east to west, those were the shaft of a pencil, and the very brightest one, right above Jester-- well, that was the eye of some ancient creature that had been plucked out and thrown up into the sky a million billion years ago, probably, because sometimes patterns got _boring_ and you needed to come up with a _story_ instead of just making up lines for the sake of it.

The stars here were different than they were on the Menagerie Coast. Not _very._ Jester could still see the line of her pencil and the burning eye, but they were shifted south, and all but one of the stars in her lollipop had seem to vanish over the horizon as they traveled.

Beau followed her gaze up to the sky. “Stargazing?”

“No,” said Jester. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing,” said Jester, which _might_ have been a lie, but it hardly counted.

Beau shifted her weight, and Jester saw her wince a little. Old injury, maybe. Healing could only do so much. “You’re a bad liar, Jes.”

Jester rolled her eyes. “Maybe I’m a good liar and _you’re_ just too clever for everyone’s good.”

“Yeah, you’re not the first person to tell me that,” smirked Beau. “What’s on your mind, girl?”

The burning eye looked down at them, unblinking, from the dark sky. Jester stared back up at it, and not at Beau. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Swear I won’t,” said Beau.

“Avantika.”

“How so?”

Jester sighed and thought for a moment before replying. How was she supposed to answer _that_ question?

“I’m scared I’m not going to be as good at sex as she is.”

Beau looked at her quite seriously for about five seconds before starting to cackle, so loud that Jester glanced back towards the dome to make sure she hadn’t woken anybody up.

“Oh my _God,”_ laughed Beau. “Oh my God! You’re-- Fuck, I forget you’re a virgin.” She dissolved into another fit of giggles and reached up to grab Jester’s shoulder, to steady herself, probably. “You’ve got an inferiority complex about a dead pirate whose-- whose--” she gasped in a breath, snorted-- “whose head we left on a stake halfway across the ocean!”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Jester huffed. “I know more about this stuff than you do, technically.”

Beau giggled again, but this time, it trailed off into a smile. She took her hand off Jester’s shoulder (which was _fine_ ) and wiped a tear from her eye with a last low chuckle. “Jokes aside, yeah. Okay. Teasing over. Y’know what Mollymauk said to me once?” 

The name didn’t burn like it used to. It didn’t hurt the same way anymore. It made Jester smile now, not ache, not sob. It reminded her of Molly, real Molly, not the body they’d buried by the Glory Run Road. The circus man, when he’d shone bright.

“What?”

“He said,” Beau continued slowly, “that nobody comes out of the grave proficient in sex. I made fun of him for it. That’s what I do, right? But he made a good point. You can think about this stuff all you want, but book-learning’s only gonna get you so far, and for some folks that’s all they want, sure. And that’s fine. But you want to fuck, you’ve got to admit you’re going to be bad at it.” She smirked at the annoyance on Jester’s face. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun! And I’m not saying you haven’t got an advantage over most folks. I mean, you know where the clit is, right? That’s more than your average dude starts out with.”

“What _is_ it like?” asked Jester. “Sex. Actually. Not like all the books talk about it, all drama and feelings, but _actually_.”

“I mean, you know all the biology crap already. It’s not... I dunno how to describe it. It depends on who you’re with. It depends on a lot of things. But it’s fun, usually, and it feels good if you’re both honest and you ask for what you want.” Beau shrugged. “You just gotta recognize that you’re in it together, trying to have a good time, and you will, probably, and if you don’t there’s always tomorrow and there’s always other folks. It’s not the big deal a lot of people make it out to be, but I figure you know that, with your mom and all.”

“What was it like with Keg?”

Beau laughed. “It was good. I mean, there were probably better ways we could have dealt with our shit. But they wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

“Did she cry? She seems like the kind of person who cries during sex,” said Jester in a tone that was somewhere between _knowing_ and _joking_ and hopefully not _too_ curious.

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” shrugged Beau.

“You’re no lady,” replied Jester with a grin.

Beau chuckled. “Yeah, fair. I don’t think she cried, but I mean, it wasn’t her _face_ I was focused on for most of it.”

Jester wasn’t a _liar,_ technically, because she hadn’t _said_ anything about how that kind of a sentence made her feel, or about how the thought of Beau with her head buried between Keg’s thighs was making her own cunt throb, or about how that was _definitely_ an image she’d be summoning up the next chance she got at some personal time.

Beau smirked. “What, do you find that idea distracting?”

“No,” said Jester quickly, and, well, that _was_ a lie, so much for _technically._

“What’s going on with you and Fjord?” Beau asked abruptly. 

Jester shrugged. “I like him. He’s nice. He has a nice dick.”

“It’s not that nice,” said Beau. “I mean, it’s just... kind of massive. That’d _hurt._ ”

“It’s pretty,” Jester defended. “It’s, like, two different colours! It’s nice!”

Beau waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve seen nicer.”

“It’s nice, you know, _objectively,_ ” explained Jester. “It’s very well-proportioned. Objectively!”

Beau’s whole face squinched up as she looked at Jester sideways, like the tiefling was some kind of little puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out: she was pretty like this, when she was thinking, and it wasn’t a way Jester got to see her very often. Beau didn’t like to be clever in front of people, or at least, she didn’t like to show it. It was funny, how she had this whole idea of _who_ she was and _what_ she was and how those weren’t the same ideas she wanted everyone else to have, necessarily. All of her friends were like that, a little. People were complicated, and they kept secrets from each other and they kept secrets from themselves, not just about silly things like who they _liiiiiiiiked_ or where they’d come from or what they’d done, but about who they _were,_ really, deep down. Jester thought that maybe they just didn’t know it well enough to put it into words. 

“You know, _objectively_ isn’t a word girls usually use when they talk about boys they like?” said Beau finally.

“You use it!” objected Jester.

“Yeah, sometimes. You ever think about _why_ that’s a word I use about boys?”

Well, that was easy. “Because you don’t really _like_ boys.”

“Exactly,” said Beau, in her schoolteacher voice, or what Jester thought a schoolteacher voice might sound like.

“I like boys, though,” Jester said. “Technically.”

“Aw, Jes...” Beau was was laughing a little, but in a sad sort of way. “Are you _sure_?”

“Some people like boys, and some people like girls, and some people like both,” said Jester, repeating the words she’d said to herself so many times before, “and I like boys.”

Beau stopped laughing and looked at Jester with an expression Jester hadn’t seen on her before. “Have you _ever_ liked a boy?”

“I like Fjord,” said Jester, “and anyways, were you even _listening,_ because I just _told_ you--”

“You know you don’t have to, right?”

“What?”

Beau raised her eyebrows. “Think about it. Do you actually like Fjord because you like him, or do you like him because he’s a dude, and he’s nice, and he’s here, and he has a nice dick, _objectively_?”

Jester blinked.

Beau pushed herself up off the ground and stretched out, catlike, to crack her back. “Think about it. That’s all I’m suggesting. I’m going to bed, you want me to send Cad or someone out to chill with you?”

“I’m okay,” said Jester slowly. “But thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Beau shrugged. “Shout if you need us.” And she turned and set off back towards Caleb’s tiny hut.

So that was that.

And yes, Jester _wondered._

Just a little more after that.

It was the little things that she noticed now, or maybe she’d noticed them before, but she hadn’t _thought_ about them, really, and now she _did_ think about them, because Beau had made a point (maybe it wasn’t an _accurate_ point, that was up for debate) and Jester couldn’t un-hear it. So the next time Yasha reached for something and her shirt hiked up a few inches, and Jester’s eyes lingered for a split second on the faint trail of hair running down from her bellybutton... the next time an innkeeper leaned over the counter with a devious smirk, a low-cut shirt, and a twinkle in her eye, the next time they passed through Felderwin and Bryce held Jester’s gaze with their own for a moment, with the slightest, sweetest smile...

Beau’s voice in her ear: _Think about it._

And Beau, obviously. Beau, Beau, Beau. Beau, with crimson streaking down her face, with her hair dripping with sweat, with her teeth flashing white in some kind of sadistic smile as she fought for her life and had the time of it all in one; Beau, crouched on a rooftop, looking out across a city with sharp eyes and sharper wit; Beau, stretching stiff limbs and rubbing out sore muscles as she undressed for bed, laughing a rare laugh at one of Jester’s jokes or another. Beau, with her smeared eyeliner and undercut growing in just a little, soft brown fuzz on golden skin, and Jester let herself put words to it, _finally,_ cautiously.

Because Beau was beautiful.

Objectively.

Or...

Or maybe not so objectively. 

“I don’t know, it’s just that I think she’s really pretty, and nice, and everything, but I don’t--”

“Yeah, you do,” said Caduceus with a mellow smile, taking another sip of his tea and licking his lips. “Mm. That’s nice.”

Jester blinked at him. “What?”

“Tea. It’s nice. Would you like some?” He offered his cup.

“No-- no, what did you say?”

“Oh. Yeah. Beau. She’s really fond of you, you know.”

“Well, _yeaaaaaah,_ ” said Jester, drawing out the vowel dramatically. “We’re best friends.”

“Hmm,” said Cad.

“You don’t use a lot of words,” remarked Jester. “It’s funny. You’re very good with them.”

“I don’t think that’s any reason to waste them.”

“I don’t _liiiiiiike_ Beau,” said Jester.

“Mm,” said Cad.

“You’re not being helpful,” complained Jester.

“Yes I am,” said Cad. “Have some tea. It’s very good.”

Jester took the tea, and drank it with as much annoyance as she could possibly muster.

“There you go,” said Caduceus pleasantly. “That’s better.”

“I like boys,” said Jester. 

“Me too,” said Caduceus. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? They smell nice.”

“I like boys, technically, but, I think maybe I don’t, though.”

“Hm,” said Caduceus. “You use a lot of words.”

“UUUUUUUGH,” said Jester, flinging herself back into the grass dramatically. “Ca _du_ ceus!”

“You’re annoyed,” observed Cad. 

“You’re not being _helpful!_ ” Jester whined again.

“You already said that, and I already disagreed.” He looked at her curiously. “Are you saying it again in case I changed my mind since then? I haven’t.”

Jester sighed. “What do you think?”

Caduceus looked at her through half-lidded eyes with a dopey smile. “Now, _that’s_ a question, isn’t it?”

Beau pulled another couple of peppermint leaves off the plant on the windowsill and popped them into her mouth. “Urgh. That poison shit tasted nasty. Remind me to keep my mouth shut next time we’re fighting evil bug monsters, yeah?” She chewed absentmindedly as she probed at the scratches across her torso, wincing as she came to one particularly deep cut. “Ouch.”

“Let me,” said Jester, smacking Beau’s hand gently away from the wound. “You’re going to rub more dirt in and then it will get infected and then I will have to spend more spells on you.”

“Alright, bossy,” smirked Beau, raising her hands in surrender. “Do your worst.”

The cut was deep, but the edges were clean, and they lined up neatly. It would heal fine so long as infection didn’t set in: Jester rubbed her hands together and they began to glow with a soft white light. “Don’t move.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Beau said.

Jester settled onto her knees so she was level with the injury and reached out and ran one finger slowly and carefully along the length of the gash, taking her time sealing the edges back together. Around the bottom of Beau’s ribs, the blade had shifted, carving a deeper gouge into the flesh of her stomach. Jester _tsk_ ’d and grabbed Beau’s hip to hold her steady as she traced the last few inches of the wound.

And was it her imagination, or did she hear Beau suck in a sharp breath as she did?

(Imagination, probably.)

(Jester had always had an active imagination.)

The final gap in Beau’s skin closed, leaving a single thin line-- the faintest of scars, and Jester knew even that would fade in a few days. She looked up at Beau. “There you go. All better. See?”

“Yeah,” said Beau faintly. “Much better.”

Jester didn’t move her hand.

Beau didn’t move away.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Jester, uncharacteristically quiet.

“Have you, now?” asked Beau.

“You said I should,” said Jester.

“I did, didn’t I. What’ve you thought about?” Beau’s voice was definitely strained, and Jester didn’t know quite what to make of that, so, well-- so much for _technically--_

“You,” replied Jester. 

Beau said nothing, but Jester saw the undertones of her face redden just a little.

“I think maybe, maybe you were right about Fjord,” admitted Jester.

Beau said nothing, but her skin warmed under Jester’s hands.

“I think you’re very pretty, Beau,” Jester said, and she’d started talking now, so she might as well finish-- “I think you’re very pretty and I like you a _lot,_ and we are best friends, but I think maybe I might also a little bit want to kiss you, and maybe after that-- maybe I’d like to do other things to you after that, maybe things not involving clothes, and--”

“Jes,” whispered Beau. “I’m--”

“And I mean, you don’t have to feel the same way, of _course_ , because you are very pretty, like I said, and you could have anybody in this whole town or country or world, but--” Jester was babbling. She knew it. She didn’t try to stop herself...

And then Beau moved.

Slowly, she went down on one knee, then the other, till her eyes were level with Jester’s: Jester’s hands finally fell away as she moved, but that was all right, because Beau wasn’t leaving, she was getting closer, close enough for Jester to feel her breath on her lips, and-- 

“You can do it,” murmured Beau.

“Do what?” asked Jester, because her brain seemed to have stopped working.

“Kiss me,” Beau said. “And--” the words seemed to catch in her throat. She took a moment, swallowed, and tried again. “And maybe, if you’d like, do other things to me after that.”

“Oh,” said Jester. “All right.”

And she did.

Beau felt like she was burning up, skin hot like she was running a fever, and that was something Jester hadn’t known about blushing, that other people could feel the warmth too if they were close enough. The two of them were close enough, and it was a good thing this was _close enough,_ too, because Jester didn’t think she could get much closer than this, than her lips on Beau’s and her hands back on her waist (but with a _slightly_ less divine and _slightly_ less professional intent this time)-- the floorboards were hard, it was uncomfortable, not the _best_ -planned kiss of all time, but Jester wasn’t about to stop, because Beau’s breath tasted like peppermint leaves and she smelled like sweat and blood and that wasn’t _nice,_ exactly, but it was Beau through and through, _Beau, Beau, Beau,_ kissing _her._

It was like the whole world shrunk down and the only thing that mattered was Beau and Beau was kissing her like the feeling was mutual, like Jester was the only thing worth paying attention to in the whole world, and Jester couldn’t decide whether that should make her giggle or turn her on, or a little bit of both, maybe, probably. Fjord giving her a lungful of air-- that hadn’t been a kiss! That hadn’t been anything _close_ to a kiss, because of course, mouths touching does not a kiss make, which Jester knew now because _this_ was definitely a kiss and it was about a lot more than just mouths. 

“Mm,” said Beau, pulling back the _tiniest_ little bit, just enough to form words, but still so close that Jester felt every consonant brush against her lips. “Fuck, I-- we’re supposed to meet everyone downstairs. Dinner.”

“I’m not hungry,” whispered Jester.

“Me neither,” agreed Beau, and giggled like a little girl. “I mean, not like, _food_ hungry--”

“Can I kiss you again?” asked Jester, and she’d barely finished the sentence when Beau leaned back in, just for a quick second this time, a moment of contact that left Jester wanting more. 

“Floor’s hurting my knees,” said Beau. “Bed?”

Jester lifted a finger and tapped Beau on the nose with a cheeky smile. “Okay.”

“You want me to take my clothes off?” Beau asked, seemingly nonchalant, but Jester was pretty good at reading people too, and there was _definitely_ an answer Beau was hoping for, which was nice, because it was the same one Jester wanted to give, so instead of giving it Jester stood up and began to unbutton her own dress.

“All right,” grinned Beau. “Good answer.”

It wasn’t the first time Jester had seen Beau naked, probably not even the fiftieth, maybe not even the _hundredth,_ and the thing was that it wasn’t any different this time (but of course it was different in every _possible_ way this time). There was the same matrix of scars across her arms, the same stretch marks along the insides of her breasts, the same thatch of curly dark hair at the meeting of her thighs. Beau was skinny, like a gymnast, with most of her muscles clearly defined beneath her brown skin-- the opposite of Jester, with her wide curves and soft belly, but that was okay, because they had different jobs _anyways,_ and Jester would rather be strong than skinny _anyways,_ and she was built just like her mama _anyways_ and people came from the other side of the world because her mama was so beautiful, so-- 

“You can ask me questions, if you want,” said Jester cheerfully as she settled back against the pillows. “Tiefling bodies are kind of different, maybe, and I don’t _think_ you’ve ever fucked a tiefling before, and I like that you have a lot of questions, even if I can’t answer them sometimes. I think it’s nice that you’re curious.”

“Jes,” said Beau softly. She shook her head, laughed a little, a gentle sort of sound. Melodic, almost. “I-- Fuck, you’re beautiful. Just-- just tell me what you want, tell me what feels nice, yeah? Maybe I’ll take a rain check on the academia for tonight, and you can give me an anatomy lecture tomorrow...”

“Oh, sure,” grinned Jester. “I just thought, you know, since you’re having such a nice time looking, maybe--”

“I love you so much,” Beau said. “Can I--”

“Please!” said Jester, wiggling her hips to emphasize the word. 

Beau grinned, and there was something sharp in it, something almost _hungry_ glinting in her eyes. “All right. All right.”

She climbed up on the bed, crawled up over Jester’s body and leaned down till her loose hair fell free over the two of them: Jester could see the muscles of her shoulders and arms working to hold her up as she hovered just a few inches above her, looking deep into her eyes like they led straight into her soul. The grin was still there, that cocky sort of smirk, and Jester grinned back, because two could play at that game-- pointed teeth jutting out from behind her lips-- Beau’s gaze flickered down to her mouth, the confident expression slipped, and Jester _felt_ more than heard her take in a long, slow, shaky breath at the sight. 

“Careful,” said Jester, keeping up her own wicked smile, “I just closed up your cuts. I don’t want to give you more.”

“Jes, you leave marks on me with those, and I’d never let them heal.”

“That’s how you get infections!”

“Worth it,” breathed Beau, still holding herself above Jester, still not touching her. Just looking down at her like she was some kind of beautiful drawing, or some sort of statue, or a _really_ pretty creature, like the sort of birds they’d seen when they’d made port now and again during their time at sea, the sorts that were a million different colours. It was nice. It was nice, being looked at like that, being looked at like that by _Beau._

It wasn’t _enough,_ though. 

Jester squirmed. “A- _hem_.”

“Sorry,” laughed Beau. “Got distracted. Beautiful view.” She settled one knee on either side of Jester’s waist and leaned down for a quick kiss-- their lips pressed together, briefly, almost chaste, if that was an adjective you could _use_ in this sort of situation, in _any_ sort of situation where Jester was practically dripping onto the sheets-- Beau smirked again and settled back on her haunches-- _Gods, she was flexible--_ and ground down against Jester.

And _that,_ that was nice.

Jester let out something that was more a whimper than a moan, and Beau laughed and did it again, and Jester’s hips jerked up involuntarily. “Ah--”

“Good?” asked Beau.

“Amazing,” Jester said breathily.

“One of these days,” Beau remarked in a tone that was almost conversational, “we’ll find some glassworker who’ll keep a secret, and we’ll get you a dick I can ride _properly_.” 

“I know some people,” said Jester, trying and failing to match her nonchalance.

“’Course you do,” said Beau, and rolled her hips again, and Jester sucked in a breath that caught in her throat, tuned into a cough, then a giggle. “You’re making fun of me!”

Beau looked down at Jester and smiled. “Maybe a little.”

“I can do it too, you know,” said Jester, flashing her teeth again, narrowing her eyes as she smiled. “I can make fun of you for _lots_ of things. I can make fun of you for how you wanted me so bad you couldn’t even handle me stitching up your cuts, I can make fun of you for looking at me like I’m the most beautiful work of art you’ve ever seen, I can make fun of you for hard you’re trying to keep it together--”

“I’m not _trying_ ,” Beau retorted, but there was no acid behind her words. “I’m _succeeding_.”

“Okay,” said Jester cheerfully, and she grabbed Beau’s hips and dug in her nails, and Beau made a sound that was absolutely _obscene,_ somewhere between a sigh and a groan, and her fingers curled tight around fistfuls of the sheets, and _that_ shut up her smart mouth, didn’t it!

Beau was a pretty picture like this, eyes closed and rolling back, mouth half-open, chest shaking as she pulled in a breath, and Jester felt a fresh pulse of warmth at the meeting of her thighs. Hmm.

Almost experimentally, she gripped Beau tighter, pressing her thumbs in below the crests of her hips, and lifted her up off of her. The monk didn’t weigh much-- the force of her attacks didn’t come from any sort of muscle mass, they were all speed and timing and Jester _knew_ she was light, she’d picked her up before, carried her when she was injured or exhausted or unconscious, but not like this. Never like this.

“ _Fuck,_ ” moaned Beau.

Jester shoved Beau up and to the side easily, rolling her onto her back, and crawled up so their positions were reversed: it was Jester straddling Beau now, and she was a little surprised by how much she liked it this way.

“That’s better,” Jester grinned. 

Beau’s face was burning red now, and it’d have been brighter if it hadn’t been for her dark complexion. “Jes--”

“I said there were things _I_ wanted to do to _you,_ ” said Jester, “not the other way around, and I feel like _you_ might like it better this way too. Am I right?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Beau breathed. “Just a little.”

“There’s no need to be em _barrassed_ , Beau,” said Jester sweetly. “I won’t _tell_ anyone.”

“I’m not _embarrassed_ ,” muttered Beau. “I’m-- Jes, I’m fuckin’ _turned on,_ and you’re not _helping--_ ”

“Oh,” Jester said. “Well, maybe this will.” And she shifted back, wiggling down Beau’s legs towards her ankles till there was enough space for Jester to lean down and press a kiss to her iliac crest, run her hands lightly over her thighs-- 

“It’s not--” Beau said, or started to say but that was when Jester lowered her head just a little further, just far enough for her breath to brush against Beau’s clit, and the monk _grunted,_ which wasn’t usually a sexy kind of sound but right then and right there it might as well have been some kind of bardic masterpiece for how beautifully it rang in Jester’s ears. “Jes, I swear, if you don’t--”

“What was it Dairon was always telling you?” hummed Jester. “Be patient?”

“Oh, _don’t_ talk to me about Dairon right now,” Beau mumbled. 

“Okay.” Jester flashed a smile one last time. “Teasing over.”

And then she _really_ went to work.

**Author's Note:**

> _TW: Avantika shows up very briefly in a dream sequence, touches Jester's sternum, and speaks suggestively to her. Jester is unable to talk. She wakes up before it goes any further._
> 
> There’s a few things we stan in this house. #1 is nonbinary lesbian Dairon. #2 is Beau refusing to admit she’s a bottom. #3 is using fanfiction as catharsis for all the internalized stuff you’re still carrying around, which I cannot and _will not_ stop doing. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Today’s thing rec is, uhh, the SAS Survival Handbook by John “Lofty” Wiseman! That sounds dumb as all hell, but hey, knowledge will never let you down, and it’s kind of sexy to know how to stitch up a wound with animal guts, or whatever. Right? The Umbrella Academy is good too, if you’re not a weird survival geek like me. I’ve got my issues with the show (look up trigger warnings before you watch) but there’s very few things I wouldn’t suffer for Ellen Page in a suit.
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always. Comments make my day if you’re able to leave one (yes, I’m thinking about writing the rest of the sex, and yes, comments will motivate me, lol), but no worries if not. Don’t forget to love each other, and don’t worry-- it’s almost (next) Thursday.


End file.
